position: absolute - Design resources and inspiration.

Update 2007-10-19: as our readers Aaron and Kai have kindly pointed out to me, this is no longer an issue. Hyphens & underscores are now treated equally by Google.

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Well, here’s something I wasn’t aware of until moments ago. When using SEO-friendly and user-friendly URLs, always go for hyphens instead of underscores.

Good:
/seo-quicktip-underscore-or-hyphen-in-urls

Bad:
/seo_quicktip_underscore_or_hyphen_in_urls

Why? Because according to this post, Google doesn’t recognize the underscore as a divider. Basically, that means you would have to include the underscore in your search term to bring up the URL. I don’t think anybody actually does that. Clearly a point for Team Hyphen. I’m just glad WordPress does “good” URLs out of the box.

If you’re a web designer who works with CMS systems, you’ll find that from time to time you’re going to have to do a little database migration. I usually create websites on my local test server and later on migrate them to their online servers. What often happens to me is that all the special characters get mangled up on the new server. Quotes et al turn into the weirdest combinations (”it’s” -> “it’s”). I’m pretty certain a few of you are nodding your heads in acknowledgment right now. Well then, it’s your lucky day: Michael Chu has written an article explaining why that happens, what you can do to fix it, and how you can prevent it in the future.

The creators of the excellent WordPress software have released the first public version of bbPress, a new forum software that focuses on bringing the same simplicity into the realm of forums as WordPress has done in the realm of blogs. Some of the features:

• Fast and Light: nothing you don’t need.
• Built in spam protection by Akismet.
• Really simple interface: we want people using our software to forget that they’re using it.
• Complete integration with WordPress.
• Both the look and the functionality are highly customizable.
• RSS feeds for everything.

Plus, it’s focussed on being completely standards-complaint. Sounds good. position: absolute is happily running on WordPress, so I have high hopes in this.

Ever wanted to put your dynamic website on a CD? I always thought it was impossible due to the missing server, but MicroWeb makes it possible. All the user has to do is start an .exe and he’ll see your dynamic website in his browser, right off the CD. MicroWeb launches a temporary webserver, with full support for CGI and a built-in MySQL database. While it has a hefty price tag of $299, it has a flexible license (no royalties and no other limits) and there is a fully functioning shareware version (with a nag screen, of course). I’ve seen this baby working and it does what it promises. Now if someone could come up with a GPLed version, that would be great.

Want to turn your standard Apache boring server directory listings into something like this?

Tom Sherman offers us a quick guide on how to accomplish this.